Songs From the Bardo

Paired with drones from strings and struck bowls, the multimedia artist’s vivid readings from The Tibetan Book of the Dead offer the possibility of solace in sound itself.

When his brother-in-law died in a refugee camp in India, Tibetan singer and musician Tenzin Choegyal joined his sister in mourning. Tibetan Buddhists believe that when someone dies, their consciousness wanders through an in-between phase called the bardo for seven weeks before transitioning to a new life. This journey can be disorienting and frightening. To help guide his brother-in-law’s consciousness toward rebirth, Buddhist monks read aloud from TheBardo Thodol, also known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, over the course of 49 days. “The ritual performance and recital of The Bardo Thodol by the monks transformed my sister from a devastated person to someone who gained conviction in her life again,” Choegyal writes in the liner notes for Songs From the Bardo. “The whole process was as therapeutic as anything I have ever observed in my life.”

Over the past 15 years, Choegyal has explored the power of The Bardo Thodol in a variety of musical projects. Songs From the Bardo is the latest manifestation and finds Choegyal in collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Laurie Anderson and composer Jesse Paris Smith. Anderson acts as the guide, reading passages from The Bardo Thodol translated into English by Choegyal. The unknowable expanse of the bardo is invoked by Choegyal and Smith through vibrations summoned from a variety of particularly resonant instruments.

Resonance is the closest that sound gets to touch. Lyrics can describe a caress, but reverberation can move air and bodies in ways that viscerally recall the breath of a loved one on the nape of the neck. Throughout much of Songs From the Bardo, it is the soothing drone tones of Choegyal’s Tibetan singing bowls and Smith’s crystal bowls that hold the space. The album’s songs flow into one another with little regard for beginnings or endings, just as TheBardo Thodol describes the journey of the consciousness through death to the next life. On “Heart Sutra Song – Gone Beyond,” Choegyal’s plucking of the dranyen, a Tibetan stringed instrument, provides a grounding counterpoint to Anderson’s inquisitive violin and guest musician Rubin Kodhel’s brooding cello. Over the strings, Choegyal sings part of the Heart Sutra in Sanskrit; his natural vibrato makes for one of the most stirring moments on the album. Elsewhere, Anderson’s recital is also deeply resonant. Her words often hang in the air for a split second after they leave her mouth. Over Smith’s gently rousing piano on “Lotus Born, No Need to Fear,” Anderson imbues each description, including “a fish rolling in hot sand,” with such emotion that it floods the mind.

“Listen without distraction” is a refrain that Anderson repeats throughout Songs From the Bardo, and one that occasionally made me wonder if the album would have benefitted from using her gift for spoken word more sparingly. The interplay between the three collaborators’ instrumental contributions is so absorbing that maybe it doesn’t always need the narration; the spiritual guidance is apparent in the resonance itself.

That said, dissonance plays as an important role as resonance on the album, especially in its second half. On “Dancing With the Crescent Knife,” Choegyal’s low chant rolls underneath creaking strings that, along with Anderson’s theatrical storytelling, bring to life the most disconcerting phase of the bardo. The spoken word on Songs of the Bardo, it is important to note, draws exclusively from the Chonyid Bardo, the part of The Bardo Thodol that describes the various spirits, including “blood-drinking wrathful deities,” that one’s consciousness encounters in the bardo. “Natural Form of Emptiness” illuminates those spirits further. Choegyal plays the lingbu (a Tibetan bamboo flute) like the guiding call of a bird, as if to say, This way, this way. Then the repeated crash of a gong signals a warning, but Anderson encourages the listener to hold their ground. “Awakened one, when projections appear like this, do not be afraid,” she recites. Then, later, “They only arise out of the spontaneous play of your mind.”

The spontaneous play of your mind. These words hold particular weight at a time when systemic injustice, existential crises, and self-commodification pull the psyche in a thousand different directions at once. Anxiety, stress, depression, and a general sense of paralysis are common complaints of everyday people, and are without fail capitalized on by the very institutions and corporations that purport to support us. Insomnia, a smaller but related complaint and something I’ve experienced recently, can feel like being trapped in an in-between state. I listened to Songs of the Bardo on repeat when my eyes were burning and my head felt clogged, and it helped. The album’s contemplative pace—designed for listening in solitude, not playing in the background—cracked open just enough mental space to provide relief, and for that I am very grateful. While based on a text to help the recently deceased reach rebirth, Songs of the Bardo is very much an album about life; a salve as much as a guide.